NEWS BRIEFS

Building Restricted

Los Angeles has approved stiff new building restrictions on an 8-mile stretch of the Santa Monica Mountains from Bel-Air to Hollywood, south of Mulholland Drive.

Proposed by Councilmen Michael Woo and Zev Yaroslavsky, the one-year interim control ordinance bans single-family home construction on roads narrower than 20 feet unless a city zoning administrator determines that the project "will not create health and safety hazards."

Several prominent hillside homeowner groups--including the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns.--praised the ordinance as a long-overdue move to make the hillside areas safer. But critics of the restrictions have labeled them an elitist attempt by hillside dweller to keep newcomers out.